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Short answer: no.

A few days ago, Brighton and Hove News published this article. It’s an interview with Matthew Cook, one of the organisers of this year’s Kemp Town Carnival. In it, Mr Cook argues we should ignore the planned fascist march in Brighton, and leave it to the Police to deal with, whilst we all party it up at the carnival.

Since “just ignore them” is a fairly common message we get sent, we thought we’d look in a little bit of depth at why this is such a bad idea.

It’s been a busy weekend for Brighton Antifascists, despite the March for England not even trying to hold their annual crap-fest of a march this year.

The weekend began early with “Pompey” Dave Smeetyon (leader of March for England) and about 10 of his sad looking mates turning up in town on Thursday to celebrate St Georges day by doing a quick photoshoot on the pier then spending the rest of the evening hiding in the beer garden of the King & Queen, checking nervously over their shoulder in case antifascists turned up. Despite various threats they didn’t try going within 100m of the Cowley.

After yet another humiliating defeat on the streets of Brighton in April 2014, our regular visitors from “we are not racist, honest” March for England decided to call it a day and to organise their shambling procession somewhere else in 2015. We can only say well done to all those who contributed to this victory of humanity over primitive racism and nationalism of MFE and their allies on the far right. Perhaps Dave Smeeton found out, that next year he couldn’t count on a massive police presence to protect his knuckledragging racist mob from the antifascist protesters? After all during last three years MFE marched only because cops made it possible for them. Perhaps they also finally realised that nearly everybody in Brighton hates them and more and more people were going out on the streets to oppose them, whereas their own numbers were diminishing rapidly.